(Washington) Americans did not wait for Black Friday, this Friday, which traditionally kicks off the year-end shopping season, to pull out the bank card and spend, making retailers optimistic despite inflation, shortages and , now, a new variant.
The anguish of empty toy shelves indeed seems to have pushed many parents, grandparents, uncles or aunts, to do it in advance, to avoid the drama of the long-awaited gift, but absent at the foot of the tree, to cause of global supply difficulties causing shortages.
American consumers have, for example, already spent 76 billion dollars at online retailers since the beginning of November, more than 20% more than last year at the same time, according to data released Friday by the Adobe computer company.
Unsurprisingly, toys were particularly popular: sales jumped 261% compared to November 2019, before the crisis. Adobe, in its press release, describes “anxious parents, increasingly aware of the difficulties in the supply chain”.
In total, Americans could spend, during this holiday season, 10.5% more than last year, in stores and on websites, according to the American Federation of Retailers (National Retail Federation) which tables out of a total of $ 859 billion.
Retailers and market watchers are indeed optimistic, in light of the low unemployment rate and relatively strong household finances, which benefit from US government assistance programs, along with tax credits for families.
Extraordinary measures
To save their year-end season from stockouts, retailers had taken extraordinary measures, such as importing and stocking items earlier than usual, ordering air freight shipments and, in in some cases even chartering their own vessels.
With mixed results, however: while big box chains like Walmart and Target are doing well with well-stocked inventories, others, on the other hand, like Gap and Nordstrom, have reported lost sales for lack of success. get all the products you want.
But the prices keep rising. Inflation, a “priority” for Joe Biden, is now at its highest for 31 years, driven by shortages and delays, at a time when demand is strong in the United States.
It is also due to the rise in gasoline prices, which weighs on finances in a country extremely dependent on cars, but also on food products. Energy prices alone soared 30.2% in October from October 2020, food prices soared 4.8%, according to the Commerce Department’s PCE index.
This is weighing on consumer sentiment, which plummeted in November, the University of Michigan said on Wednesday, which released the preliminary results of its monthly survey.
New variant
And another threat has now been added: that of a new variant of COVID-19, detected in South Africa and potentially very contagious, which could derail the global economic recovery.
The news knocked Wall Street down on Friday when it opened, including airline, cruise line and oil company titles. On the other hand, Zoom and Peloton, which became very popular during the first confinements, have started to rise again.
Consumption, the driving force of the American economy, took off again at the end of the summer, after a small fluctuation in July linked in particular to the Delta variant.
In October alone, total retail sales reached $ 638.2 billion, up 1.7% from September and 16.3% from a year ago , according to figures released in mid-November by the Commerce Department. These figures were inflated by inflation, however.